“Caleb? Caleb! What is she going to do? What’s happening?”
His eyes widened at something to my side. “Kella, she got clean, but the queen never came back. Your mom’s been drugged up for so long… Kella, I’m sorry. I don’t have enough time. I…” His image paced back and forth in front of me. He looked up. “I’m sorry. I love you. And this is what I want.”
My eyes widened.
“Caleb?” My voice caught. “What’s going on?”
“She needs to do it now,” he muttered. “Why isn’t she doing it?” He looked up at me, his eyes frantic, “Kella, let go of me now.”
“What are you talking about?” My voice was hoarse.
Murmuring circled around us, but I stayed focused on Caleb.
“You need your magic or the investiture will fail. Take back your magic now.”
“The investiture is supposed to fail!”
He shook his head, his eyes wide. “No, it isn’t. Not now. Let go of me.”
“No! And even if I wanted to, I don’t know how.”
“She might not do it in time. You have to take back your magic. You have to let me go.”
“Of course she won’t kill you in time—or ever. She promised. She’s my mother, and she promised, and everything’ll be fine and…” Even as I babbled, I recognized I no longer believed the words coming from my own mouth.
Our eye contact broke as a robed figure shoved the scepter into my view—the first clear object I’d seen since Edon sprinkled me with pixie dust. In any other circumstance, it would have been breathtaking, with its carved loops fashioned as interlocking vines, climbing up to make a knot of ivy and thorns. Someone grabbed my hand. I struggled against them but I was too weak to snatch my hand back. Another fae pried my fingers open and thrust the head of the scepter into my palm, piercing my flesh.
I gasped.
“Goodbye, Kella. I love—” Caleb cut off. I turned back toward him, but he was no longer there. I held the scepter in my hands, staring at the nothing in front of me, blood dripping down my palm onto the skirt of my dress. I thought Caleb’s name over and over again, willing myself to see his face. But nothing.
And then a spot of warmth anchored in my chest—expanding, climbing, building—worming its way to my extremities and leaving me gasping for breath.
And I knew—this was mine. This was magic. This was death.
“Caleb,” I sobbed.
He left. Dead.
I took a shuddering breath in, tears dripping onto Stuart’s fantastic gown, mingling with the blood stains. I stared at the scepter in my hands, not seeing it. Not until it started to glow—faintly at first. I wanted to drop it, but my hands spasmed around it, tightening on the scepter like a vice.
And then another warmth built, starting in my hands. I stared in morbid fascination as a glow crept around my fingers, circling, entwining. My fascination soon turned to horror as it circled up my forearms like a snake looping around its prey.
I shook my clenched hands. “Open,” I muttered. “Open!”
I looked up to see the councilors, their mouths firm, eyes unfeeling. “Stop it. Stop this,” I begged, even as the glowing tendrils continued their climb, wrapping around every inch of me.
“Help me!” I screamed. But Briana and Aaron stood still, looking on. And Maeve, a look of resignation settled on her features—Maeve turned away.
Frantically, I scoured the room for someone, anyone, that could do something. My gaze fell on Edon. How long he’d been kneeling by my side, staring up at me, I had no idea.
The tendrils of power were at my neck now, gliding up my chin.
“Help me. Please,” I choked out, abandoning any pretense of pride.
Edon didn’t look away. Instead, he reached his hand out, placing it as close to me as he dared. “You can do this,” he said.
I shook my head as the white glow rose to eye level, making everyone around me disappear like little sunspots.
And then the glowing tendrils tightened, contracting, putting pressure on the entirety of my body. A piercing scream tore through the air—it took a moment to realize it was coming from me—that I was sitting on an altar, holding a scepter that flared a bright, blinding white light, my body rigid, as a foreign magic pressed in on me.
I screamed again as it contracted, a steady, building pressure as the magic squeezed itself into every pore of my body. Edon was gone, Maeve was gone, the entire grand hall disappeared. The only thing remaining was the pain—an agony that threatened to tear me into tiny pinpricks of flesh.
Child. A voice pushed against my consciousness, interrupting my torment. Let go. Let go and I can help you. It was a loving, grandmotherly voice. A voice that made you want to curl up in its lap and let it make everything all better—nothing like my mother’s.
And it wanted to help me.
Help me, like my mother helped Caleb?
Anger stirred within me. Let go, it said. I didn’t even know what it wanted me to let go of.
Let me in. I can help, the voice said. Do not fight the investiture. Fighting causes the pain.
Fighting causes the pain. Since when had fighting caused anyone pain? No. Dads who should have loved you, been there for you, but beat you up instead—they caused pain. Moms who deserted you and then lied about saving your brother—they caused pain. Trusting in people—in fae—and letting them “help” caused pain. Fighting never did anything other than make me feel alive, and I’d be damned if I was going to lose my fight, too.
So I pushed. I pushed against that power, that energy with every single strained muscle in my body. I screamed and pressed against it like I could funnel all that power into the hole Caleb had left—the void my mom and my dad tore open.
Sweat ran
